Roughly 85% of consumers report reading online reviews prior to doing business with a company, reading – on average – six different reviews across a variety of channels: Facebook, Twitter, e-commerce websites to name just a few of the most common. These reviews serve two related purposes:

They differentiate who you are by specifying the unique features of your product or service.

This, in turn, increases your SEO ranking as user reviews generate more online content, content which, by some accounts, is responsible for 9.8% of your total SEO ranking factor.

And increasing your SEO ranking must be a top priority. Marketing automation platform Optify has found that websites which are ranked number one in SEO receive an average click-through rate (CTR) of 36.4%. Those ranked number two experience a 12.5% CTR. And those in third place see a CTR of 9.5%. What this means is that if your business doesn’t have in place a strong SEO strategy, you will lose out on opportunities to create a better brand reputation, increase click-throughs, and boost sales.

There are many ways to improve your SEO standing but, perhaps, one of the most powerful comes from making the most of customer-generated content. Consider the following three ways SEO is improved when you leverage customer feedback and reviews.

1) Customer reviews create invaluable rich snippets

Featuring customer feedback and reviews across your website, on as many pages as possible, will increase your chances of a higher SEO ranking. Search engines pull information from product pages and use this information to enhance search results, creating “rich snippets.” Rich snippets, the most common of which are product star ratings and reviews, are an especially effective way to attract customers:

Product page visitors who read and interact with online reviews convert at a 58% higher rate than those who don’t.

Shoppers who read and interact with product reviews reflect an increase of 62% in revenue per visit.

The average order value increases to 3% when shoppers engage with reviews.

Reviews not only encourage visitor interaction but also boost consumer confidence, another important component of any successful SEO initiative.

3) Customer feedback ups your social media game

Social media marketing and SEO go hand in hand. Because social media relies on high-quality content and a visible, strong brand presence, any efforts you make to improve SEO can doubly improve your social media reach. Likewise, the better your social media presence, the greater your SEO ranking will be. Searchmetrics, the global SEO analytics and marketing software company, reports that:

Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter are among the most common places customers go for reviews.

An important, if not the most important, prerequisite for achieving high SEO ranking is good content on social media, content like customer reviews which provide visitors with the ability to make quick, easy decisions.

Social media sites which experience regular increases in their amount of user-generated content correlate strongly to better rankings.

And, finally, because there is a good chance that consumers will likely search for the name of your business plus a term like “feedback”, “reviews”, or “ratings”, including this information on all of your social media sites increases their chances of landing on one of those sites at the very beginning of their search.

Customer-generated content has a direct impact on search results, and understanding how to most effectively leverage customer feedback and reviews will give you an advantage over your competitors. Used correctly, customer feedback will increase your traffic, boost your conversion rates, and build your reputation. And, really, what other motivation do you need to begin gathering feedback today?